Badd Mojo Page 12

Somehow, Claire, Dru, Eva, and Mara had all vanished, leaving Tate and I alone in the living room, facing off.

  "Tate, stop."

  She halted, staring at me. "What?"

  "I'm sorry, I just..." I sat on the couch, keeping my eyes on Tate. "I needed some time, Tate. There's just so much going on. Between you and me, between me and Canaan, it's all too much, and I needed some time to decompress, and honestly, that included time away from you. I'm sorry. I love you, and I know it hurt you, but I just..."

  Tate nodded. "I get it. My feelings are hurt, but I get it." She sat down next to me. "So, Canaan? What's going on with you and Canaan?"

  "He left, that's what."

  "He...left? What do you mean, he left?"

  I gestured at the boys' room. "He's gone. He packed his shit, took some guitars, and left. Lucian says he was going to Seattle, but no one knows where he is or what he's doing there, or when or even if he's coming back." I leaned back against the couch, trying not to cry. "I told him about Lex, and he ran away."

  Tate was silent for a while. "Wow. I mean...Jesus. He just...left? I don't think Corin even knows he's gone."

  "Exactly! He ran away like a scared little boy." I rubbed my eyes, refusing to cry about this. "I'm so mad at him, T! I just don't get it! I tell him something I've never told anyone, not even you, and he can't handle it?"

  "I don't know what to say."

  "Me either."

  "You're mad at him, though?"

  I nod. "Of course."

  "Just mad?"

  I sighed, realizing she was drawing me out into talking about it. "No, not just mad. I'm...everything! If there's a negative emotion, I feel it toward him. I'm hurt. I'm betrayed. I'm not just mad, I'm fucking furious! I hate him for abandoning me. I don't know...there's so much...so much anger, and hurt. I don't even have words for it all."

  "Why, though? Why are you so mad and so hurt?"

  "I don't need a therapist, right now, Tate," I snapped. "I need a sister."

  "I beg to differ," she said, resting her head on my shoulder. "You need both. I think you're in denial."

  "In denial? About what?"

  "Yourself. How you feel, and what you want."

  "Maybe I am, but what does that have to do with being angry and hurt?" I asked.

  "Everything."

  "Explain."

  She sat up, pulling her legs underneath her to sit cross-legged on the couch. "You have to understand it for yourself, Aerie. If I told you, you'd just argue with me. Deny it. You'd change the subject, and come up with excuses."

  I groaned, knowing she was right. Knowing exactly what she wasn't saying, and knowing that I wasn't ready to face it. "I hate you."

  "I know you're joking, but...it kind of feels like you actually do, ever since I told you I was pregnant."

  "I don't hate you, Tate."

  "Feels like it."

  "I'm just angry at you."

  "But why? I'm the one who's pregnant, not you!"

  "Yeah, but you being pregnant screws up my plans."

  She glared at me. "Really, Aerie? Me being pregnant screws up your plans?" She didn't bother hiding the anger in her voice. "Do tell, dear sister, how that works."

  "We were coming back to Ketchikan temporarily. To get away from Mom and her controlling, domineering, momager ways. To figure out what we were doing next. I know you've been fed up with modeling, especially after what happened with that douchebag photographer. I get it, and I get that we needed a change of pace. We needed some downtime to plan our next move. But I thought we'd be planning our next move together. I thought we'd get into acting, or music, or...art, or I don't know. Whatever it was, I thought we'd be doing it together, because we're twins and we've always done everything together. Our brand, everything we've built since we were sixteen has been predicated on us as twins, as a unit. You being pregnant is a really big, giant, complicated wrench in the gears, T. Like, what now? What about us? What about our plans?"

  "It doesn't have to be the end of all that, Aerie," she replied.

  But even she didn't sound as if she believed herself.

  "Tate, come on. At least be honest with me, okay? What are you and Corin going to do? How is this going to work for you?" I took her hand in mine. "Grandpa was right, Tate. You have to do what's best for you. Not me. Not us. You, and that baby, and Corin."

  She sniffled, nodding. "I know, I know."

  "So, what's your plan?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know."

  "Tate."

  She looked at me miserably. "Fine! You want to know? We're going to get married, and we're gonna stay here in Ketchikan. Corin likes playing at the bar, likes the work, likes the peace and quiet, and being around family all the time. I'm going to have this baby, and I'm going to...I don't know. Take up photography again, maybe. That's what I've been thinking about, at least. That's what excites me--being behind the camera, not in front of it. Maybe I'll pick up the cello again, too--I've thought about that. I'm not ready to be a mom, but it's happening like it or not, and at least here in Ketchikan I'll have a support system around me. Grandma and Grandpa will be here, not to mention Corin's brothers and their wives and girlfriends. I was going to talk to Eva about the two of us possibly opening an art studio together. I don't know. I just know I love it here. This is home, Aerie, and I don't want to leave."

  I nodded. "That's what I mean. That's not what I want, and that leaves me to figure out what I'm going to do, alone. I need to figure out what I want outside of you, outside of us as a unit."

  "It's more than all of that, though, Aerie," Tate said, sighing. "It's more than what I'm going to do, or be, or where I live, or any of that. None of that really even matters."

  "I'm lost, then."

  She smiled at me. "Corin."

  "Corin?"

  "He's what matters, Aerie. I wouldn't care where we were, as long as I'm with him. I could make it work and be happy anywhere, as long as I have him."

  "Oh my god, Tate, you're so dramatic," I said, but the insult lacked sting, because deep down, her words stirred something inside me--jealousy? Envy?

  She smiled at me. "Maybe. But it's true."

  "So you're totally content just being a wife and a mom? Really?"

  She laughed, a bright, happy sound. "Yes! Absolutely. I love Corin with all my heart, and the thought of having my whole life ahead of me, with him in it as my best friend and my husband? It makes things like what I do for a living seem...irrelevant. We'll figure that out. I'm capable and talented, and I know I can figure out some way of making money doing something fulfilling. Modeling was never that. It never fulfilled me. It gave me a fat bank account, which is nice, and it was fun traveling the world and all that. But all of the traveling and the money has only served to reinforce how much I don't need or want any of that."

  I shook my head. "See, I could not disagree any more strongly, T. I want so much more. I want to...I want to make music. I want to play in front of crowds, and sell out stadiums, and see my name on a movie soundtrack, and...I want to see more of the world. I want to walk the red carpet. I want...there's so much I want. And none of it is here, in Ketchikan. I love this place, I truly do. I appreciate the peace of it. I love having people here that I care about. Whatever I do, I'll always come back here. And I know someday, someday, I'll make Ketchikan home, but that's far in the future. I have too many things I want to do first, though."

  She sniffled. "And that's fine, Aerie. We have to live our own lives. We're not kids, anymore. We don't have to go everywhere together, do everything together. We don't have to be Tate and Aerie, Aerie and Tate, the twins. We'll always be twins, obviously, but we can live our own lives." She met my eyes. "I think, at this point, we have to. I think we'd have come to this conclusion even if I hadn't gotten pregnant. That just moved the timeline up a little, I guess."

  "Yeah, just a tiny bit," I said, sarcastically.

  Tate and I let the silence stretch out between us.

  "Where does this leave
you and Canaan?" Tate asked, eventually.

  I shook my head. "I don't know." I sucked in a breath and held it, trying to fend off the fresh onslaught of tears threatening and pooling behind my eyes. "God, I don't fucking know! Nowhere? How am I supposed to know where any of this leaves him and I when he's fucking gone?"

  "The only thing I can say about that, Aerie, is that if something crazy happened and Corin were to freak out and run away, I'd be so mad the only possible option would be for me to find him and punch him in the nose, and then ask why he wouldn't just talk to me about it. I'd tell him I love him, and that being apart isn't an option."

  "It's not an option?" I frowned, stood up and paced away. "Being apart isn't an option?"

  Tate spoke from the couch. "It's just not a thing. Corin and I...being together, being a couple? It's more intense and more...necessary, I guess, than even you and I being twins, being connected the way we are. You and I, we didn't choose to be twins. It's always been a thing. It always will be a thing. But Cor and I? I choose this, Aerie. He's...he's necessary. I don't know how else to put it. I just...I can't not be with him. It's not a codependent thing, like, I can exist and survive on my own, I just choose not to."

  "I don't know how to have that...I don't know if I even want that. I don't--" Tears sprang out, staining my cheeks, salty on my lips. "If he runs when I give him the trust I gave him in telling him that secret, then what do we have? I was trying to...I was trying to pave the way for there to be an us. I couldn't be with him, I couldn't let him be with me without knowing that about me. That secret has...it's tainted my life. That secret has ruined anything I could have had with every man I've ever known, because I couldn't talk about it, and because Lex just ruined all men for me, in so many ways."

  Tate hesitated, and then spoke. "See, that's what I don't get."

  "It's complicated."

  "If anyone can get it, I can."

  I sighed. "The way he hurt me, the way he betrayed me...it was betrayal and abandonment and a stab in the back and salt on a wound all in one, and it made it so I just assumed every man was going to treat me the same way. I mean, shit, what reason do I have to trust any man, ever?"

  "Aerie, I--"

  "No, I mean, think about it, Tate. Our father left us when we were little kids, and he never looked back. He didn't want us. We didn't matter to him. We never mattered to him. And then there's Bob--"

  "Bob is a dick and he doesn't count."

  "I know, but he does count. He left a wife and two kids to be with Mom, and he tried to be all buddy-buddy with us, but..."

  "He's just creepy," Tate said.

  "Beyond creepy. The looks he'd give us made me sick to my stomach."

  "He never did anything, but..."

  "I just don't like him, and never have and never will." I shivered.

  "What does Bob have to do with anything?" Tate asked.

  I shrugged. "Because he's just one more man in my life who's added to my inability to believe any man could ever be...not a dick."

  I felt Tate behind me. "That's not true or fair." She just stood behind me, her voice quiet, but strong. "Corin isn't like that. Bast isn't like that. Neither are Zane, or Brock, or Bax..."

  "What about Cane?" I turned around, crossing my arms over my chest. "He left at the first hint of shit getting hard."

  "Dick move, I grant you." Tate bumped her shoulder against mine. "Question is, what are you going to do? Only you can answer that question, Aerie."

  "Helpful, Tate. Super helpful."

  She laughed. "I live but to serve, swami."

  Another long silence.

  I finally turned to meet Tate's eyes. "Doesn't it scare you, needing Corin?"

  "Absolutely." She answered without hesitation. "But it's worth it."

  "How?" I asked, in a whisper. "Why?"

  "I love him," she answered. "He's worth it."

  "What if he leaves you? What if he decides he wants something else, someone else?"

  "That's the risk, and it's one I'm willing to take. It's a gamble. He could totally decide that. I have no way of knowing with one hundred percent certainty that he won't do that to me, at some point."

  "And you're still willing to give him your heart, your future? Your whole life?"

  "Without question."

  "Why?" I asked, because I genuinely had no answer, no understanding, no comprehension of how that could possibly work.

  She shrugged, shaking her head. "He's worth it. Loving him is worth the risk. Letting him love me is worth it."

  "But how can you--"

  "He's not a random stranger, Aerie," Tate cut in. "He's not some bar hookup. He's not some hipster I met at a coffee shop in Greenwich Village. It's Corin. We played together in diapers. He knew me when I was in braces and thought BabySitters Club was the height of literature. It's...it's him. That mitigates the risk somewhat, because I just know him. But this whole thing where we're in love and all that? There's no formula for it. There's no manual, no way to know. There's no secret. You just...you have to decide if the guy is worth it. You have to decide if having him in your life is enough to risk everything you have at stake."

  "I don't know how to do that! How do you decide that?"

  "Can you live without him? Can you let him walk away?"

  I shook my head. "It hurts, Tate. It hurts so fucking bad! He left? He ran away? He couldn't...I'm not...I wasn't enough? How could he? How could he? I hate him so much, because I thought of anyone in this whole world, if anyone could understand and forgive me and love me despite...despite my secret, it would be him. But he didn't." I was crying, now, speaking through clenched teeth, anger and pain vibrating through me. "He didn't. He made it clear I'm not enough. That he doesn't care about me. That what I told him was too much for him."

  "They won't admit to it, but guys get scared too, A. Guys are just as scared of being hurt, just as wary of trust as we are. Maybe he's just overwhelmed and scared, and doesn't know how to deal with it, much less admit it to you."

  I had no response for that.

  He's afraid? How does that lead to him going to Seattle?

  My head spun. My heart ached.

  I found myself outside, alone, on the docks, a cold wind blowing, tossing my hair, cutting sharp across my cheek. My thoughts swirled and wheeled, and my heart posed question after question, but I had no answers.

  One thought repeated itself in my head and heart, over and over and over again--Tate's words: can I live without him? Can I let him walk away?

  Questions of love and the future and all that aside, I deserved more from Canaan than him just ghosting on me without a fucking word. I deserved answers. We may not have a future together, maybe neither of us was strong enough to be able to risk what it would take to have a relationship like Bax and Eva or Corin and Tate have, but I damn sure deserved more than him vanishing on me. Closure, at the least.

  What did I want?

  More.

  I can admit that much to myself. I want more than the distrust and the fear. I want to be free of the poisonous taint Lex left on me. I want...

  I want what Corin and Tate have.

  I want to be worth loving, to Canaan. I want to need him. I want him to need me.

  Maybe that's never going to happen. But at the very least, he owes me an explanation, and closure to whatever it was we did have--sexual chemistry at least, the potential for more, possibly.

  I have a plan, at least, although it's not much of one--I'm going to Seattle, and I'm going to find Canaan, and I'm going to confront him. What it will get me, I don't know. But Canaan doesn't get to just run away from me and think that solves anything, or that I'm going to let him get away with bullshit like that.

  9

  Canaan

  * * *

  I found myself pleasantly surprised by the experience of playing with Mike and Tomas. Mike was, shockingly, an extremely talented keys player, and possessed a rich, warm voice. The songs he'd written thus far were introspective and somewhat d
ark in terms of lyrical content, and when you add in layers of guitar and mandolin and such on top of Mike's complex vocal style? Well...you had a really interesting sound. Mike couldn't help growling, even in a folk song, but he could also just sing, which made for a vocal style that could go from tortured and snarling and growling to emotive and soulful.

  Tomas was a wizard with anything stringed--he could play upright bass, cello, violin, mandolin, dobro, lap-steel, 12-string, banjo...he was just one of those people who was created by God or the universe or whatever for one specific function, and that was to play music. Tomas didn't say much, and was awkward and weird when he did talk, but put an instrument in his hands, and he transformed into this confident master of his world. He had a slight accent, from the few times I'd heard him speak over the past three days-- Scandinavian, I think, but I wasn't sure.

  With me to round things out, we were able to lay tracks right off the bat. Mike had built himself a hell of a home studio in Seattle, a place where we could jam and practice and just play, but with the press of a button, we could also record. He wanted it to sound authentic, not a smooth, silky, produced thing, but rough and real. Which worked, since the three of us tended to be best once we'd been playing for a few hours, we'd hit the zone and find an element that had been missing, figure out a riff that wasn't right or a phrase that didn't work.

  It was a wild, intense three days, though. We played, and we drank, and we passed out for a few hours, and then woke up and ate at a nearby diner and talked music and then went back to the studio and went back to playing, and eventually drinking and playing, and then just drinking.

  Mike never asked any questions, and Tomas barely spoke, so I pretended life was totally normal, that I hadn't ghosted on everyone I knew, that I hadn't left Aerie without a word, that I wasn't suppressing everything I felt, that I wasn't in total agony, deep inside.

  I channeled it all into music. I played my ass off. Every emotion, every ounce of pain and confusion and anger I felt, I put into my guitars.

  In three days, we had twelve tracks, and each one was utterly inspired.

  Three days. That was how long I managed to keep up the pretense that I was fine.

  We cut the twelfth and best track yet, finishing at something like midnight. At which point I was a handful of shots in, and everything I'd been ignoring was gnawing away at me.